This paper presents work in progress on the Lyrebird framework, consisting of a language for specifying the programmervisible behaviour of a processor and its associated devices, a tool for automatically producing a fast simulator, and a formal semantic interpretation providing a machine model for use in an interactive theorem prover. Machine specifications are modular, providing abstract inter...

We evaluate here the performance of four models of cross-situational word learning: two global models, which extract and retain multiple referential alternatives from each word occurrence; and two local models, which extract just a single referent from each occurrence. One of these local models, dubbed Pursuit, uses an associative learning mechanism to estimate word-referent probability but pur...

Recent research on the semantics of quantificational expressions has taken on the task of relating the truth-conditional import of quantifiers with their impact on verification procedures. In particular, the semantic analysis and verification procedures associated with the proportional quantifier most have been studied in a variety of ways in an effort to reveal the correct semantic analysis of...

Below I will analyze defensible inferences underlying the interpretation of conversational implicatures and presuppositions; a nonmonotonic onsequence notion will lead from premises including pragmatic generalizations to conclusions about how those sentences are best interpreted..

Learners’ dictionaries aim to give clear indications of meaning, but not all aspects of meaning can be neatly packaged up in definitions – even without the constraints of a restricted defining vocabulary. It is difficult, for example, to deal effectively with connotation and culture-bound meanings; to show evaluations clearly and consistently; or to explain even-handedly the ideological undercu...

This paper analyzes the emergence of scalar additive meanings. We show that in Basque the same particle ere can obtain both the "simple additive" reading (akin to English too) and the "scalar additive" reading (akin to English even) but we argue that we do not have to distinguish two types of ere. We provide evidence, by means of a production and a perception experiment, that the reading is dis...

CONTRASTIVE TOPIC: MEANINGS AND REALIZATIONS